Varsity Insider

Collin Johnson would be on that list as well( Hoopsfan). LAron Bailey ( wasnt a star but he could have played at Iona) or a mid D 1 program because of his athletic ability and enormous heart/toughness.

I dont think James Mcrae played in college and he was another 6’4 guard that was very good

Rileygirl,
I’d definitely put Collin Johnson right after Dario Ross. Do you remember what year McRae graduated from HS?

hoopsfan is correct re: when the MV ‘dynasty’ in HS began. it was after the merger of Edison & Davis in the early 60s; by the mid-60s, they emerged and have become dominant ever since.

spacecadet: your analysis of the CHSAA in late 50s-60s is completely true. stepinac banged heads then with the best of the best, and certainly its “RPI” as its now called would’ve indicated its .500 record was equal to a 16-4 or 15-5 “normal” record if they played more powder-puff/mediocre S1 teams. shame of it was that WP-NR-MV-Step-IP-FP didn’t play each other regularly (at least 1x per year) after that ‘60s-early 70s. kinda reminds me when WP-Stepinac and NR-IPrep used to play the turkey bowls in FB every thanksgiving, until the state championships dissolved those rivalries and annual events. personally, because ive been a round a while, i think resurrecting some of these great historic rivalries in S1-CHSAA-PSAL geographic area (as has recently happned in the wondrous Slam Dunk Christmas tourneys the past few years) is so much more electrifying and exciting to local hoop heads and historic guys like me than seeing MV fly off to california, or peekskill to kentucky (as they did in mid-90s after winning their first 2 state titles) or NuRo flying south to play teams from other parts of the country, just to impress the USA Today Top 25 pollsters. i say: stick around! i can see the occasional big-time 8 or 16 team invitational in north jersey (NJ’s got huge talent base, as we do), philly or MSG. but we need to maintain, and continue to grow, our own ‘bitter rivalries’—which is what local folks (many of whom are NOT RICH AND CAN”T TRAVEL GREAT DISTANCES TO SEE THEIR KIDS OR LOCAL high schools play schools from other parts of the country. we have 8-10 outstanding hoop teams, maybe 12 (considering the breakthrough year Rockland’s having), and given the proximity of CHSAA-PSAL and northern NJ’s top catholic;/public HS to westchester, there’s no reason to not resurrect traditional gangbuster rivalries like MV-Peekskill, Stepinac-WP/NR, Iona Prep-NR, MV-Newburgh Free Academy and the like. county center would sell out EVERY WEEKENED throughout the season if there were Friday or Saturday “mini-tourneys” throughout the season featuring our best teams vs. CHSAA; or our best teams regardless of Classification. as one of the previous posters noted, Hamilton is DEFINITELY one of the top 4 or 5 section 1 teams historically over the past 40 years. ok, maybe they’re not dominant as they once were. but once kids/fans/parents and the media understand the HISTORY of S1 high school hoops going back to the “high light reel era” of the 1960s, then we can re-focus and re-ignite some of those legendary rivalries. hell, we can invite LI’s or NYC’s top schools up here to pair off, as we did this year when LI Lutheran destroyed Peekskill by 40. 40 POINTS! i can’t even remember a peekskilll team losing by 30, much less 40. and didn’t scarsdale beat MV by 25 last year? when i read that on MaxPreps, i couldn’t believe it. 25, whipped by Scarsdale? was that a misprint? i remember MAYBE MV losing several games by 15-20 points, EVER. so let me know if my retinas are deteriorating, or if in fact SHS whipped the Knights by 25 last year. for those unaware, many believe MV’s “dynasty” started in 71 with that amazing 3-NBA team. not true; it started a decade earlier. peekskill’s “modern” dynasty began at the same time, in the early 60s just prior to the Buck Brickhouse, Nate Carter, Billy Thomas (thomas starred at BC in football, and was a back-up to Calvin Hill & Duane Thomas on the Super Bowl champ 1970s Dallas Cowboys after graduating boston college in ‘72), Pat Thornell, Glenn/Len Robinson, Glen Gaskins (RIP) and about a 1/2 dozen other phenoms in the late 60s out of red devil land. yonkers (YHS, Gorton, Roosevelt, Lincoln, even Saunders occasionally) had amazing volume of talent in the 1950s-70s, then post-Toone a certain lethargy and waning of talent set in in ny state’s 4th largest citydespite john volpe’s amazing run there. Yonkers football continued to dominate; just not basketball. but now it seems S1 is clearly in a rejuvenated hoops alignment: more teams that are rising in talent/consistency this past decade(n. rockland, TZ, pelham, Lakeland, JFK, PC, Yorktown, Suffern, westlake, PRiver) have a chance to permanently emerge from the shadows against the traditional S1 powerhouses (MV, Peekskill, NuRo, Poughkeepsie, Gorton, Woodlands, Hamilton) to make for a more fascinating hoops scene locally. i wonder: what happened to Nyack? why isn’t Beacon, which beat peekskill on a last-second shot at county center earlier this decade, battling every year for a final 4 berth at CC—there’s plenty of talent there, along with Poughkeepsie, Elmsford, tarrytown and yonkers. wasn’t Sleepy Hollow the #2 seed, and they were routed in the opening round this year by (i believe) Rye? spring valley should be in the mix EVERY YEAR, the talent pool they have there. but this is the first time in a harvest moon i remember the tigers getting to the class A title game. anyway, my memories from the 1950s up til now have been amazing ones, when it comes to S1 hoops. the fact that today’s JNews says 4000 people will attend the NR-MV semifinal game proves my point. generate local rivallries AGAIN among the best programs, and all the other teams (in those leagues/conferences) will have to catch-up in order to improve. don’t worry about state titles, people. that’s the reserve of the peekskills, mount vernons, Wings/Lincolns/CTK/Rice et al in the PSAL/CHSAA. those programs have excelled the past 1/2 century, and will continue to do so. remember, u can’t get to Glens Falls without first getting to County Center. and u STILL can’t get to Glens Falls (as TZ or SV will soon understand) until u slay the dragons of S1 and win the Gold Ball in white plains.

what’s been going on the past 5-10 years with “illegal” or “unusual” or “Suspicious” transfers to/from section 1 schools (most notably port chester, nuro, peeky) should definitely be looked into, IF TRUE and VERIFIABLE. but it’s nothing new, really. its going on now in NYC, with a kid who recently transferred from a CHSAA school (Xaverian, i believe) to Lincoln (PSAL, Brooklyn)—-but he was denied the ability to play. in S1/S9, some high-profile schools (NFA, SValley, Yonkers, NuRo et al) were notoriously suspect
for their underground pipeline of talent that materialized just before the season began. of course, catholic high schools have perennially been accused of poaching/recruiting the best talent of public high schools in the region that the specific catholic HS finds itself in. interstingly enough, it rarely happens in other sports like it does in hoops, though it does happen. there’s one wrestler from S1 who recently won his 2nd state title. his home district in Hendrick Hudson-but he attends Fordham Prep in the Bronx, a good hour (and 40 miles) south of his Buchanan home. kid’s name is lenzi, and there’s not a whisper of ‘illegal recruiting’ by FP toward this kid. of course, hen hud isn’t a wrestling hotbed like Mahopac, FLane of JJay—but if it was, there’d be howls of conspiracy theorists everywhere around. in fact, HHud last had a 2x state champ in the late 1980s, anthony aliberti. i think geoff powell (suffern) was the last 2x S1 champ in the mid-90s; powell went on the wrestle at Iowa. don’t know if aliberti wrestled in college. my point being, hoops gets more PR, and more people follow the sport. but if illegal transfers occur in the high-profile public powerhouse programs, it should be exposed and stopped. period. otherwise, all the talk about “sportsmanship” and “ethics” is hypocritical. ps: my predictions: poughkeepsie beats MV, Peekskill beats AMagnus in girls A hoops, MV girls wins AA title. SV whips TZ in class A boys. let’s see how good my crystal ball is. great azz-whuppin’ beatdown today by MV over NuRo. i was surprised, really. thought the Hugh-Gees were gonna finally wrest the gold ball away from the knights, to no avail. but i do think Po’ will rise to the occasion, and get to the GF Final 4 in 2010.

Suprised nobody has mentioned that there are FOUR Williams brothers. Dave “Scap” Williams played in the mid/late 70’s. Almost made the Utah Jazz.